


Jellyfish

by Tayijo



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Gore, M/M, Minor Character Death, Parent Death, Plotting Murder, Pre-Slash, Swearing, These Characters Are Not Nice People
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 16:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tayijo/pseuds/Tayijo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Allison saw her father’s face at the hospital the night of Lydia’s birthday party and she understood that her mother was really dead, she thought that that was the end of her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a kind of companion piece to ‘We Shall See Visions.’ I guess technically it’s a prequel, but you can read them in either order, I think.  
> I didn’t really mean to write this as Allison/Lydia, because although I think they should be bros I don’t really ship them, but when I finished I realized you could totally read it that way, so I tagged that ship. It’s not explicit, though.  
> TW fic that deals with Allison’s face-heel turn in the end of season 2 is kind of rare, but I thought it was a really interesting character development. Both Allison and Lydia, actually, have a lot of potential for cool character arcs that hasn’t really been cashed in on by the writers of TW, and I’m hoping that with more episodes next season we’ll see something like this. Although probably not as dark, because, uh, this is pretty dark (I think I covered it in the tags, but feel free to suggest another tag if you think it needs it). But then, I don’t think Allison is actually as nice a person as everyone seems to think she is, so. Feel free to comment if you disagree!  
> Title taken from The Mountain Goats’ ‘Home Again Garden Grove.’

There’s this awful mix of boredom and terror that comes when he’s waiting for a battle to start. It’s not the worst feeling in the world, but it’s up there, and tonight it shifts heavily in Chris’ gut. When he was a kid, 15 years old and waiting in the back of a pickup truck with the rest of his father’s hunters on his first raid, he figured that feeling went away with experience. The veterans, they didn’t feel that way, he was sure of it. They knew better, knew not to be terrified. 

Now he’s a veteran of hundreds of hunts, he’s closer to 50 years old than 15, and he knows he was a dumb kid back then, because that feeling never goes away. Your hands don’t shake the same way, it’s true, and your reflexes are more reliable. You learn to trust your body and your mind to get you through this fight like they’ve gotten you through the last dozen. But you also know exactly what it’s like when everything goes to hell, the blood and the pain and what it looks like when your friends die. You have nightmares on the regular, and when you’re sitting in the dark of a black SUV, senses straining into the night, those nightmares dance around you and all you can do is breathe through them. 

This is a particularly shitty night for an ambush. It’s not winter anymore, not quite spring yet either. It’s March, and it’s raining, like it has been all day, and even though it’s only about 40 degrees out they can’t turn on the heat in the cars because the stink of it would give away their position. The street lights smear in the rain, and Chris is doubly glad that he assigned a man to signal when the alphas leave the bar, because no way in hell is he recognizing anyone by sight in this mess. Missing the alphas entirely and triggering the ambush on innocent humans are both outcomes he wants to avoid tonight.

He can feel the tension building in his muscles like poison. If he doesn’t distract himself, he’ll be stiff and awkward when it’s time to spring the trap, so he glances at the passenger seat next to him. Allison is pale and jittery; her left knee shakes almost imperceptibly for about thirty seconds, and then he can see her realize what she’s doing and still herself, take a deep breath, then another. She’s a good kid, skilled. She’s beautiful and smart and gentle. When she was five and he put a bow in her hand for the first time, he was so certain he was doing the right thing, but she could die tonight, like any of them could, and he hates himself for not being stronger. For not realizing it was possible to be stronger, to say no to his father. 

This line of thought isn’t helping him relax. He huffs out a breath, quieter than a sigh, and looks out the window again. From what he can see of their setup, which isn’t much, his men have done well tonight. This bar is in the industrial part of town, and it’s going to be closing in about twenty minutes, at 2 am, so there aren’t a lot of people around. His hunters are driving an assortment of vehicles, parked along the street at irregular intervals. In town, the constant smell of people makes it easier to disguise their scents than it would be in the woods, so he’s not too worried about that aspect of their trap. They’re observing strict silence protocols- no speaking, no unnecessary movements, communication solely via touch-screen texting so that even the press of buttons won’t give them away. His men are well trained, well practiced. This is going to work out fine. 

 

Mark sends the signal from his bar stool: They’re gathering their coats. It’s not time to move yet, but soon. Minutes, seconds maybe. Chris knows there isn’t any perceptible change in his men, but he can feel their readiness, their eagerness. This is a major hunt, three alphas together, and from a pack that’s known for its ruthlessness, its willingness to harm humans and weres alike. It’s a big get, and they’re hungry for it. 

Dark shapes traipse out the door, backlit by neon, collars up against the rain. Three of them-- is it the alphas? Yes. They’re moving towards their car, and Chris feels the familiar battle readiness curling in his muscles, tilting him forward until he’s poised on the edge of that cliff, ready to fall into violence. He glances over at Allison, gives her a reassuring smile. She’s not going to be in the thick of it, she’s covering possible escape routes from a distance with her bow. He’s indulged his fatherly instincts that much. 

The first alpha reaches for a door handle and adrenaline slows the universe to a crawl. As soon as that door opens, everything begins. All of Chris’ attention is focused down onto that one motion, everything in him is ready for the explosion, the fire, to charge in guns blazing to make sure none of the monsters get out alive. But instead of fire, he sees… hesitation. 

Chris has no idea what, exactly, is going wrong, but he knows something is. He can see it in the tilt of the alpha’s head, the smoothness of her movements. His gut kicks him, _This is about to get really fucked_ , and he snaps open the radio, breaks the silence.

“They’re on to us. Go go go.”

Everything after that is motion.

The car blows, Martin setting it off manually instead of waiting for the trip. The alphas are already gone, though, black streaks in the shadows. For a second he thinks, _Maybe._ Maybe they’ll just run away. Maybe we’ll all make it home from this.

But then he’s out the door of the SUV, his gun at the ready. He doesn’t remember drawing it or popping off the safety, but it barks in his hand, pointed before he even thinks about it at the shadow ripping the roof off Jim’s car. 

The rain is in his eyes. It’s coming down harder now, the worst possible timing for a downpour, and he’s turning in circles, trying to find Allison. She was just behind him, and now there’s no sign of her. He can’t wait for her, has to keep moving. The pavement is slippery under his boots.

Another shadow streaks toward the third car, a minivan that apparently wasn’t as well disguised as he thought it was. There’s a rip of gunfire out the window, and the shadow changes direction suddenly, slides under the van, out the other side- a hit? He can’t tell. He keeps running in that direction, gets off a shot but misses as the van jerks into motion, fishtailing in an attempt to dislodge the wolf with its claws sunk into the metal of its side. 

The streetlights pop and go black, and he curses. _We are so fucked_.

It takes three beats of his heart for his eyes to adjust to the sudden dark. The only light now is cast by the flames still chewing on the alphas’ car, undeterred by the rain. Off to his left, he hears a shout- more gunfire- a howl. It’s getting farther away. No telling who’s chasing whom, but there’s not much chance of him catching up either way. 

He dashes the rain out of his eyes, turns to take stock of his surroundings. There’s a squeal of tires and he thinks maybe the van is coming back around for another pass. He gets his pistol up, knees bent, ready to be the rock to the van’s hard place, and the alpha clinging to it ground to dust between them. 

There’s a sound behind him, soft like the rain kissing the pavement but with more mass behind it, and he knows the van is the least of his worries. She’s right there when he turns, her arms hanging easy by her sides. She’s not even in her beta form, like he’s nothing, no threat at all even to a human. There’s blood on her silk shirt, but she’s moving like it isn’t hers, and his gun is already up and he’s shooting before she has a chance to show him her teeth or give him a villainous taunt or whatever it was she had planned. He has no time for drama. 

The bullets should hit her, but she just kind of bends out of the way, the smoothness of her movements making them seem less sudden. He feels slow, and old, and then his clip is empty. 

Chris turns and runs down the street, toward the spot down the block where there are still streetlights to level the playing field. Away from the SUV where he saw Allison last. He can’t hope to outrun the alpha, but maybe he can gain a few seconds, enough to slap in a new clip of bullets. His hands know what to do, he doesn’t even have to think about it, just slide the new clip out of his jacket pocket and slam it into the gun. 

He’s under the streetlight, panting, his back to the pole like it’s going to protect him. There doesn’t seem to be anyone chasing him anymore. There are no sounds of fighting from any direction. It’s been less than a minute since the beginning of the fight, but if it wasn’t for the burning car in the parking lot of the bar, he would think he was the only one out tonight. The most likely explanation for that is that all his men are dead, but he can‘t let himself think about that now.

_Allison_. He swallows down the urge to whip around in panic and forces himself to trust his training. Scans left, scans right. _Less haste, more speed_ , his mom used to say, but he’s repeated it to himself so many times that he hears it in his own voice even in his head.

When he turns back forward, the alpha is in front of him. He fires off a round over her shoulder- another, and that one hits her shoulder but she doesn’t even make a face at the impact. He knows the wolfsbane will get her, if she doesn’t have a way to cure it. It won’t be fast enough to save his life, though.

Her hand is fast as a snake, and it bites as cleanly. Four fingers and a thumb, claws sunk to the second knuckle under his breastbone. He can feel the rending slice of it as she casually twists her hand like she’s turning a doorknob. The pain is blindingly bright, and he knows from the location that she’s probably severed the artery just under his heart, which means he’s already dead, but, weirdly, the worst of it isn’t the pain or the fear, it’s the pulling sensation as his muscles separate, as the weight of his body stretches open the wound and he comes undone. 

He gets off one more shot, thinks- hopes- it hits her in the thigh. She laughs, then, a pretty laugh, like sparkling chimes, and gently takes the gun out of his hand. 

“Thanks for the wolfsbane bullets, chief,” she says, and then dull static swallows him. 

 

***

 

When Allison saw her father’s face at the hospital the night of Lydia’s birthday party and she understood that her mother was really dead, she thought that that was the end of her. She was hollowed out, just a paper shape with nothing left to rattle around inside her but one hard, sharp point of darkness, the black hunger for retribution. She was entirely empty, because her mother was dead. 

Her father filled her back up again, drop by drop. She’s still hollow, still angry, sometimes she still stays up at night feeding tidbits of bile into the coal of revenge that lives at her center. But her father brought her back from that cliff edge before she jumped all the way over, and he held her steady and told her different things than his father told him when his mother was killed. He told her _patience_ and _courage_ and _justice, not revenge_ , and maybe she didn’t really believe him but the telling filled her up a little bit. Like pebbles in a well.

The physical training helped, too, the precision of the martial arts steps, the sweat of the boxing, the mindless repetition of cleaning a rifle over and over. She liked being a hunter, she found, and she was good at it. She’d always known she was a good archer, good at target shooting- her trophies proved that- but this was different. This was a vocation, and it was hers, and it helped. 

When Liz brought back word that three members of the alpha pack, the short haired woman and the twins, had been seen playing pool and picking up girls at the same bar three weeks in a row, Allison was ready. This was a clean hunt, and if part of her was sorry that there was no revenge in this fight, another part of her was glad for the chance to put her hand to good work. Even Derek and Scott wanted the alphas dealt with. This was _constructive_. 

So she sat with Martin and let him explain the car bomb he was preparing and how to set the trigger mechanism, and she loaded extra clips of wolfsbane bullets with Rick, and she let herself think with her hands. _Mom would be proud of me_ , she sometimes told herself, but mostly she tried not to feel that absence or remember her mother‘s face. 

 

***

 

Allison’s role is not to be backup, not exactly. Her father explained it to her like she was a barrier, the perimeter that contained the fight. She has to admit, she’s been learning hand to hand but her best skill is still with a bow, and that’s not exactly a close range weapon. It makes sense for her not to be in the thick of things, and she tries not to feel like her father is treating her like a child. She has to set her jaw and remind herself that he’s lost a lot too so that she doesn’t complain; her pride twinges but she does manage to keep her mouth shut. 

Sitting in ambush is cold and nerve-wracking. The silent waiting stretches out like a rubber band about to snap, and her father’s abrupt order to attack almost surprises her. He’s out the door and then she’s following, hanging back so she can see what’s going on and put her arrows into the right bodies. The light of the burning car clearly highlights the alpha on top of Jim’s car, so that’s where she sends the first bolt.

It might as well bounce off, for as much effect as it has, but she sends another straight on its tail, and another and another, and they hit, bam bam bam, right across the alpha’s lower back. She can hear gunfire off to the side, and then more shots, but she’s setting another arrow to the string already, and this one hits the alpha square in the center of his back. The man-- creature, she can’t think of him as human because he _isn‘t_ \-- straightens up like he felt that one, and tilts, and then falls off the car.

She’s almost surprised that it was that easy, until she runs up to him to make sure he’s really dead and she sees the clusters of bullet holes all over his torso. He must’ve… she turns and looks into the car and sees Jim staring up at her through the hole in the roof with round white eyes, semi-automatic in his hand. He’s panting, maybe in terror, maybe in relief, and Sam in the seat next to him is so much raw meat. 

Allison wrenches open the door. It no longer seems to be the same shape as the frame of the car, but it opens with a groan, and Jim tumbles out. He’s upright and walking, he’s OK for now, so Allison turns, takes the serrated knife out of the sheath on her thigh, and slices the alpha’s throat down to the vertebrae. She pauses, looks down at the blood spilling out onto the concrete, and cuts again, and again, until the alpha’s head separates from his shoulders, and then she straightens up and kicks it away, just in case. Jim looks at her, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look like he’s judging her, so she refuses to feel like she‘s overreacting. The thing was a monster. Besides, it’s protocol to confirm kills. 

They leave Sam. There’s no helping him, and there are two more alphas out there in the darkness. Allison wonders if they should split up. Jim was supposed to be in the thick of things, and she’s, you know, perimeter, but Jim grabs her arm and hurries her along with him. He’s covered in his best friend’s blood and it’s possible that he doesn’t want to walk into the dark alone. 

No one else is where they’re supposed to be, either. Her dad is nowhere to be found, and Liz is driving the minivan in erratic circles, scraping against brick walls in an attempt to dislodge the alpha clinging to the side. Liz is a dervish behind the wheel, and Allison can’t get a bead on the shadowy shape before the van turns again and blocks the shot. Jim tugs on her arm. “Let Rick deal with it, he can shoot out the window.”

Allison follows Jim toward the fourth vehicle, but its doors are gaping open and it’s abandoned. Max and Ben and the others are nowhere to be seen, and neither is the third alpha, so she and Jim turn back toward Liz‘s van. Jim scoots off to the right, gestures her off to the left, and when she slides along a shadowy wall to try to get into a good position, she trips over something and falls right next to Ben where he lies staring up at the sky.

He doesn’t seem to have a scratch on him, but his eyes are unresponsive, and he’s not breathing. Panic swells up in her throat, hot and sour, and she reaches desperately for her memory of the battlefield first aid her dad taught her. She’s about twenty chest compressions in when she realizes that the damp she’s kneeling in is blood, not rain, and she thinks to look under his body. His intestines have been ripped out through his back, and his spine is clearly broken. 

She turns to the side, falling awkwardly on her butt on the asphalt, and vomits. There’s nothing in her stomach, not even water, so there’s nothing to spew up, but her throat burns. She should get up, get back in the fight, she knows she should, but her legs aren’t obeying her and her lungs are shivering and Ben’s blood is on her hands, on her jeans, on her boots, _everywhere_ and all she can think about is the wide irregular stain on the carpet in her bedroom. Her vision goes hazy and she forces herself to stop thinking, to count backwards from one hundred. She gets down to 63, loses track, starts again. And again. 

 

Jim and Liz bundle her in the backseat of the SUV and wrap a blanket around her. She can feel meaningful looks passing between them, and she’s embarrassed at how she acted. She’s an adult, a hunter. She shouldn’t be having panic attacks in the middle of battle just because there was a little blood. 

“Don’t tell my dad, OK?” she asks, knowing that they will anyway, but hoping that maybe they’ll phrase it kindly when they report her actions to him. The look on Liz’s face isn’t meaningful, exactly. Sick, maybe. 

“Allison…” she starts saying, but Allison isn’t hearing her.

 

She thought, when her mom died, that she knew what it meant to be hollow. Now she knows what it means to be truly knocked loose of all moorings, and she’s turning to dust and blowing away.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

The thwack of the arrow when it hits the target isn’t all that satisfying, but Allison feels like it should be, so she tries it again. The target in the backyard isn’t really set far enough back to be challenging, because the property isn’t big enough, and she can’t go out in the woods for target shooting without risking an encounter with Derek Hale, and that’s just a headache and a half. She doesn‘t have the energy to deal with it today. She’s been trying all morning to pretend like the crappy setup is the reason her practice isn’t making her feel better, but she should probably just stop. 

In the days after her mother died, she felt frantic and unpredictable, like a spring wound too tight, on the verge of shattering and releasing shrapnel everywhere. She almost wishes she had some of that nervous energy back. This feels like drowning in black mud, like her limbs weigh three times what they ought to. She has more work than ever to do, and no motion in her muscles to do it with, and nothing makes it better. 

She turns her head into the sound of the back door opening and then closing again, registering that that means there’s someone standing there without really looking to see who it is. It doesn’t matter who it is. 

Still, she’s mildly surprised to see Lydia coming up to stand next to her, and the surprise is a relief from the monotony of grief, so she raises her eyebrows in a question. 

“You haven’t been answering my texts,” Lydia says, clearly unhappy with this state of affairs. 

This is true. She hasn’t been answering anyone’s texts, not anyone from school at least. She’s been too busy trying to hold together her parents’ empire, the one she’s slowly realizing she knows next to nothing about. It’s all she has left of them, and she’s been trying to maintain their legacy even though she barely has the strength to answer the phone calls from her father’s employees. They’re minions, really, subordinates who are loyal to the Argent name but aren’t thrilled about the idea of answering to a girl who isn’t even eighteen yet. So no, she hasn’t been answering Lydia’s texts.

“The last time you thought it would be a good idea to leave me in the dark, it didn’t work out so well.” Lydia is worse than unhappy. She’s pissed. “This is unacceptable, Allison. We’re not playing this game where you hoard information and make decisions about other people’s lives without consulting them. I will not be left unprepared and helpless like that again.”

Lydia’s voice is razor sharp and barbed like the wormwood arrowheads that tear three times as badly coming out as they do going in. Allison likes those arrows, likes the casual cruelty of them. She almost wishes Lydia’s words would hurt her like that, but there’s nothing left to hurt anymore. She’s all fog. Still. 

“I’m sorry,” Allison says, and she means it as much as she can. “I wish I could be your friend and go to the mall with you and help you pick out clothes, because you deserve that. You deserve something easy and fun and not this horror show. But I can’t. I’m in the middle of a war. My- my father is dead.” Her voice breaks. She takes a breath, keeps going. “He’s dead, but I’m not and I have to- I have to keep it together. I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Lydia puts her hand on Allison’s back, between her shoulder blades, then wraps her in a hug, ignoring the hard lines of the bow squished between them. “Tell me what’s going on.”

And Allison sighs, and she does. She tells Lydia everything she knows about the alpha pack, and the battle three nights ago that left two alphas and four hunters plus her father dead. 

“The rest of the alpha pack is still out there, but half my dad’s people are leaving town anyway. It’s like they think we’ve _lost_ , like there’s nothing left for them without my dad to tell them what to do. They’re scattering, running to other hunting clans or just running.” Allison doesn’t bother to hide the contempt in her voice. Lydia has no patience for cowards either. “Some are staying. Martin, Jim and Liz for sure, maybe a couple of the others, but… I can tell they’re not sure what we’re doing here. Liz suggested that I step down, pass leadership over to Jim, but…” she trails off, uncertain. She’s hasn’t been able to think past this point through the gray haze of sorrow that’s been sitting on her lungs. All she knows is that the thought of letting the Argent hunters become the Mayfield hunters makes her feel like she’s going to shake apart.

“Yeah,” Lydia says, like she understands more than Allison does. “You haven’t been in school this week. When are you… are you ever coming back?”

Allison hasn’t thought about school once since the battle. High school is something that happens on another planet, to people who‘ve never collapsed in panic while their father was getting ripped apart a couple hundred yards away in the dark. 

“I don’t know.” After a heartbeat of silence, “No.” Once she says it, she realizes that she’s made the decision already. “I’m going to drop out. Get my GED later or something. I can’t think about school right now.” She lets that hard coal of rage push a little hardness into her bones, lets it come out in her voice. “I need to focus on killing the bitch who killed my dad.”

“I want in.” Lydia’s voice has a hardness of its own in it, Allison notices distantly. “I know I’m not much of a fighter, but I want to learn, and not just to defend myself.”

Allison turns to look at her for the first time, sees the thin press of her lips that tells her Lydia won’t be turned away from her goal. 

“You’re not the only one who wants those bastards dead,” Lydia says, and Allison isn’t sure why Lydia’s picked this fight but she’s smart enough not to argue. Except…

“You could go to Derek, you know. Jackson might be at boarding school but he’s still part of Derek’s pack, and I’m pretty sure that means Derek would train you, maybe better than I can. He knows how werewolves fight better than anyone else we know.”

Lydia nods. “I know. I don’t want to see Peter Hale again until I know I can kill him.”

Allison nods. She understands how that is. “OK.”

 

***

 

Lydia tromps in the back door, Jim trailing behind her. Allison has never seen her like this before: no makeup on, hair pulled back in a practical pony tail, grass stains on her butt and dark sweat sticking her plain white t-shirt to her breastbone. She has a bottle of water in one hand, a blunt training knife in the other, and she’s laughing at something Jim just said. 

“… no but really,” Jim says, trying for gruff and experienced, trying not to look like he’s a sour old man completely charmed by this young woman who’s bright like copper wire. “Lots of werewolves telegraph their movements because their speed and strength mean they never actually had to learn to fight properly. If you can learn to read them, it can help mitigate some of their advantages.”  

Lydia nods, takes a swig of water. When she looks over, Allison waves them both into the dining room where she’s set up a kind of command center. There’s no point in corralling everything deadly to the basement anymore. There’s no one else left to use the house as a normal family home, and she likes to be able to see what she‘s doing. 

Lydia comes and stands next to her, leans over the glossy map of Beacon Hills that’s spread out on the table. She traces the wax crayon dots that record the known movements of each member of the alpha pack while Allison explains. 

“We’re short people, but we’ve had at least two hunters tracking the alphas at all times ever since the battle, and we have some information from traffic and security cams. There are almost certainly big chunks of information that we’re missing, but we need to figure out a pattern in their behavior anyway if we‘re ever going to get a step ahead of them.” She hands over the latest stack of surveillance reports. “You’re good at puzzles. Want to see if you can figure it out?”

Lydia smiles, and Allison smiles back. She doesn’t really feel it, but it seems like the thing to do.

“I can try.”

 

***

 

It’s almost two in the morning, and Allison is having trouble concentrating on the dusty tome on her father’s desk. Her desk. She’s been staring at the same page for at least fifteen minutes, and she doesn’t even know if the information she’s failing to understand is relevant. The thing is in French, and it’s (probably, if she’s translating it correctly) about temporary cross-territory alliances formed by were-tigers in Vietnam, and the chances of it actually helping them figure out what the alpha pack in Beacon Hills is planning are pretty slim. It’s been almost a month since her father died, and she’s no closer to figuring out how to get rid of the alphas. Not that she wants to just ‘get rid’ of them. She wants to skin them alive, wants their blood on her teeth, but anything that gets them dead will do. 

She pushes the book away from her, looks across the den to where Lydia is sitting in the big leather armchair that Allison’s mother picked out to match the dark wood of the desk and the bookcases. Lydia idly taps her pencil against her lips as she works out a problem for her AP Calculus class. She usually finishes her homework in class in between taking notes, but Allison is pretty sure that Lydia uses math to give her conscious mind a break while her subconscious works out connections between information. While it looks like Lydia is doing homework, she’s really plotting murder. Allison likes that about her, but she doesn’t like where her own mind is going so late at night, so she opens her mouth.

“How are your grades these days? Training isn‘t getting in the way, is it?” she asks. A big part of her is selfish, wants Lydia to drop out too so she can have her undivided efforts, but she knows that’s too much to ask. She can sacrifice her own future, but she can’t make that choice for Lydia.

Lydia tilts her chin, presses out a small smile. “It would take a lot more than a few measly werewolves to affect my GPA. My extracurriculars these days aren‘t anything I can put on a college application, but I‘m not worried about it.” She looks at Allison with those eyes that are so much sharper than they seem. “Do you miss school?”

Allison looks away, swallows. She doesn’t miss high school, but she doesn’t want Lydia asking about it either.

“Do you miss Scott?” Lydia asks.

Allison’s stomach wrenches. _God_ , does she miss him. Her loneliness is this stagnant sucking swamp in her chest. Her mom, her dad, Scott- it all swirls together and threatens to drown her when she thinks about it. She can’t think about it. 

“It doesn’t matter if I miss him,” she says, voice hard. She can‘t handle this conversation, and she wants out of it, right now.

Lydia doesn’t know what’s good for her, though, because she says, all gentle, “He misses you. He was asking about you today.”

The thought of Scott’s quietly hopeful face almost ruins her. She swallows a sob, compresses it down down down with everything else that‘s festering inside her. “It doesn’t matter,” she repeats. “I can’t- I can’t be that girl again. I can’t be the girl who skips school to kiss a cute boy, who sneaks out at night into the woods with a werewolf, who ignores the danger she‘s putting people in. I can’t do anything else but this right now.” She gestures at the book in front of her. “It’s just- it’s too important. And I _can’t_ be weak.”

Lydia nods and gives her a sad little smile.

Allison takes a deep breath and turns back to the desk, picks up her useless notes, and lets her frustration scald away her grief. “We need more information.”

Lydia stands up, starts to wander aimlessly around the room, letting her fingers brush over the furniture. “We don’t know why the alphas are here,” she says, thoughtful. “But we do know some things about them. We know they’re not a fan of hunters.” She ticks her fingers in the air like she’s making a list. “We know they don’t have a moral objection to killing humans, but they don’t seem to be making a spree of it. They’ve killed hunters or people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they covered it up well enough that the Sheriff doesn’t know that the deaths were connected. Which-” Lydia pauses like a thought has just occurred to her. “Does the Sheriff even know that your dad is dead?”

Allison takes a deep breath. She can handle this, the practical aftermath of death, without breaking down. At first she cried whenever she tried to talk about it, but with a little repetition the words wore a groove in her tongue and now they flow smoothly out of her mouth. “No. I decided that I don‘t have time to deal with a court appointed guardian or whatever. We buried him in Mom’s grave. Isaac even helped, and the dirt was still fresh enough that he was able to keep it from looking suspicious. Officially my dad is on a long business trip in the Midwest.” 

Lydia nods, continues. “OK. We know the alphas kind of hate Derek for some reason, and they killed Erica and tried to kill Boyd unprovoked, because that hatred extends to Derek’s whole pack, sooo… maybe we don’t need to know _why_. Maybe we need to stop waiting for them to act, and act ourselves. Draw them out. Bait a trap with Derek, or one of us, or whatever, and make them come to us. We know we can kill them, both your hunters and Derek’s wolves have managed that already.”

“It’s not like they attack whenever one of us leaves the house,” Allison responds. “We wouldn’t be able to predict when they’d make their move.”

Lydia meanders over to the window even though it’s dark enough that she can’t see anything out of it, only her own reflection. “So we taunt them, make it look like we’ve got this big alliance with Derek’s pack and are having an important meeting to talk about our seriously dangerous plans. Or the reverse, make it look like everyone is mad at Derek and he‘s all alone and vulnerable. God knows the man is easy to get mad at.”

Allison’s knee is shaking. The twitch started after her father’s death. It comes and goes. She can’t stop it, doesn’t really try anymore. “I don’t know. I just feel like there’s something huge that we’re missing.”

They’re both quiet for a minute. Allison turns Lydia’s suggestion over and over in her mind, trying to decide if her hesitation is justified. She’s reminded of the weeks during the hunt for the kanima when she had been caught between her grandfather and Scott, gaps in information floating all around her and people making bad choices with too little data. 

“Sometimes I hate my grandfather,” she says before she realizes that she’s going to. “Not because he turned out to be such a hypocritical bastard, but because he showed me that I’m not a good person. I’m like him, I have violence and cruelty and viciousness in me like he did. Like my Aunt Kate did. He taught me that I’m a hunter, a predator, and I can’t unlearn that, and I _hate_ him for it.”

She looks up, and realizes that Lydia’s wandering has brought her right up to Allison’s chair. Allison leans into Lydia’s hand on her shoulder, and keeps talking. “Some of what I learned from him, though, I’m grateful for. He told me that Derek was responsible for my mother’s death, and it was true but it was also a lie. I almost committed murder because I went with the simple, easy explanation. I didn’t look any deeper, so I didn’t know that my grandfather was as much to blame for her death as anyone.”

She turns and looks Lydia in the eye. “Did you know that Gerard told my father that if my mom didn’t go through with the suicide, he would kill her himself?”

Lydia tilts her head, struck mute by whatever is in Allison’s face. 

“There was so much I didn’t know. I’m not doing that again. We need more information, and we need to figure this out, or it’s all going to backfire.”

Lydia nods calmly. “Alright. You’re the boss.”

Allison is surprised by the sincerity in Lydia’s words, but she’ll take it.

 

***

 

When the breakthrough comes, she isn’t expecting it. She’s standing at her kitchen counter at ten in the morning, going over surveillance shift schedules with Liz, and someone knocks at her front door. It could be any number of people, ranging from business acquaintances of her family to the alpha werewolves themselves, but they’re not expecting anyone in particular and Liz starts a wary scan of the windows. Allison sighs, checks the pistol in the shoulder holster concealed underneath her cardigan, and goes to answer the door. 

Death isn’t waiting on the other side, which is nice. What she does see is Stiles, which is unexpected. He looks like he hasn’t slept for three days and has maybe run into a tree or two since the last time he had a shower, and she‘s not sure if she should be relieved. Seeing him reminds her of Scott like a bucket of cold water to the face, and she has to just stand there and breathe for a second.

“We should talk,” he says into her silence. The skin is thin and tight over his cheekbones, and there’s some dark current running through him that she isn’t used to. She hesitates.  

“Is something going on?” Allison asks, trying not to wonder if Stiles‘ condition says something about what the wolves have been doing. If Scott’s OK.

“Nothing that I’m going to talk about on your front steps,” he hints heavily, and she waves him inside. 

Lydia is curled over the map on the dining table with the latest analysis of the alphas’ movements in her hands. She greets Stiles with a little nod, which he returns; Allison is briefly taken aback that Stiles and Lydia seem to have some kind of understanding. She didn’t think they were friends. Liz finishes her check of the house’s perimeter and leans in the kitchen doorway, watching Stiles with dark eyes. She’s guarded, but if someone had followed him here she would have said something, so Allison just nods her a thank you for guarding the house, for hanging back and letting Allison handle the situation. 

Stiles’ eyes track the half-drunk mug of coffee Allison picks up from her place at the table, and she remembers her father telling her that business negotiations go better when no one is hungry or thirsty. She pours him a cup, hands him a muffin, steers him into a seat at the table, and asks again, “What’s going on?”

“We need to talk about the alpha pack,” Stiles says. “And what we’re going to do about them.”

“We?” Allison doesn’t like the hardness in her voice. It makes her sound injured, sound young. She also doesn’t like Stiles implying that she and him and Scott and whoever else are a team. She’s not responsible for them; she’s on her own side, these days. 

Stiles shrugs one shoulder, slides away from the question. “I don’t know how much you’ve been keeping track of Derek and Scott and them- the local wolves I mean.” 

She hasn’t been, barely has the resources to track the far more dangerous alphas, but she doesn’t want to admit it, so she says nothing. 

“Things have been kind of …tense, for a while, between Scott and Derek,” Stiles continues. “And then Erica was killed and Boyd’s been- the point is, no one’s really been working together. But recently Scott had a change of heart-” his snort would be a laugh if there was any joy in it “-or maybe I made him see reason. Whatever. What I’m saying is, Scott and Derek, and Peter and Boyd and Isaac, and me for that matter, we’re all working together now. One pack, one goal: to get the alphas out of Beacon Hills.”

He looks up at her and his eyes are like coals. “I think the best way to do that is to kill them, and I know you want the same thing. You should work with us. Join us.”

Allison isn’t sure what she’s feeling, just knows something twists inside her at the suggestion of _allies_ , so she stalls. “What happened to make Scott join Derek’s pack? He hates Derek.”

Stiles shifts in his seat, his fingers grazing his side in a way that’s oddly familiar. He has broken ribs, Allison realizes. Before he speaks, his eyes flick toward Lydia, then away. “The alphas decided to play Abu Ghraib. Black hoods, zipties, electrodes- they went all out. Very realistic.” He sighs. “They want Scott to kill Derek and join their pack as a junior alpha or something. When their attempts at sedu-” he backtracks quickly but she notices the slip, wonders how angry she ought to feel- “their attempts at, uh, enticement didn’t work, I guess they decided to demonstrate how helpless he is to protect his people as a lowly Omega.”

Helpless. She knows what that feels like, realizes that what she’s feeling is anger at the thought that Scott might be feeling that way right now. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. It’s a crappy response but at least it’s sincere. 

Stiles glances again at Lydia, who is carefully looking down at the table, and then he actually laughs. “Hey, I’ll live. One of these days I’m going to get kidnapped and tortured all on my own merits instead of as a threat to Scott, and the kid won’t know what to do with himself.”

Allison still hates the idea of working with Derek Hale, but Scott needs her. And she needs the alphas dead. Stiles must be able to see that she’s wavering, because he narrows his eyes a little. “Would it help convince you if I mentioned that my little kidnapping adventure netted us some super secret info? We know the location of the decrepit house in the woods-- and seriously, what is it with werewolves and living in places that ought to be condemned?-- where the alphas are staying, we know when they’ll all be there, we know exactly what kind of system they have for keeping watch, and they don‘t know that we know.”

The predatory grin he flashes her reminds her so much of her dad she can barely stand it. “I discovered their watch schedule myself. Goddamn cocky werewolves always underestimate the defenseless human.”

After that, hashing out the specifics of their cooperation takes less than a cup of coffee. Coming up with a solid plan takes three more cups.

 

“I can do this thing- with mountain ash, you know how it works?” Stiles asks. Allison nods; none of her father’s hunters can do that kind of magic, but she’s read a little bit about it. It sounds useful. “Creates a barrier against all supernatural creatures, alphas included. So we could trap them in their creepy house. But then our side wouldn‘t be able to get in, either, so… we starve them to death I guess? Its kinda a long term plan.”

Allison knows how to speed up a plan like that. “Fire. I have incendiary arrowheads, and Martin has these fantastic bombs, they’re like grenades but bigger, you launch them with a sling, and they light up something beautiful.”

“Burning people’s houses down kind of a thing with your family, eh? No no no, I’m not objecting. Just…” Stiles sounds incredibly tired. “Derek’s not going to like it. And there are flaws in this plan still.”

“Like?”

“Like: how do I get close enough to the house to lay the mountain ash right up against the foundations? If they can get outside the house, burning the house down might be pretty but it’ll just make ‘em angry.” 

“Liz’ll hook you up with some green hellebore to cover your scent, a night with wind or rain would cover the noise, and I thought you said you had a handle on their guard system.”

He thinks for a second. “Yeah, yeah, OK.”

Allison sighs. “Another major flaw is that last time my family burned down a house, my Aunt Kate got caught for it eventually. I’m not sure I’m up to bribing an insurance investigator and that didn’t even work for her.”

Stiles looks a little embarrassed. “Yeah, about that… what do you know about meth labs?”

“What.”

“I mean, I’m not saying I know how to make meth. But I have seen ‘Breaking Bad,’ and over the years I may have gotten a glimpse or two of a crime scene report that I wasn’t supposed to see. Give me a couple hundred bucks at a hardware store and I’m pretty sure I can make the ruins of the house look enough like an unstable meth lab to make that the conclusion to an investigation that doesn’t have any other obvious explanations.”

“Christ. OK.”

“We’ll need to block cell service so they can’t call the fire department when they realize what’s happening.” Allison is surprised when Lydia jumps into the conversation, since she’s been quiet all morning, but she has a point. If human authorities get involved the chances of any of the alphas getting out alive will skyrocket. 

“Or, god forbid, call for backup of a werewolf-y kind,” Stiles adds. “You have equipment for that, right, Allison?”

“Um. Not anymore. Reuben, one of the hunters who left town after my dad- he was in charge of the communications equipment, took most of it with him when he left.”

“Alright, alright. I could ask Danny, he might know a solution. I’m so in his debt already, but, uh, I suppose I could work it off somehow.”

Lydia snorts, like Stiles just made a joke. “No, _I’ll_ talk to Danny. He and I have been bonding over Jackson since middle school. I’ll have better luck.”

“Yeah, OK.” Stiles nods. He still looks like he’s about to fall over, and it occurs to Allison that he probably hasn’t gotten any sleep since being kidnapped and tortured.

“You should float this plan by Derek,” she suggests. “And we’ll figure out a timeline. Tomorrow night maybe, depending on the weather.”

 

She gets a text a few hours later: _Tomorrow night is a go_.

 

***

 

The glow of the house is beautiful against the night sky. The wind is whipping the flames into twisted shapes, and the primal roar of it is thrilling in a way that goes beyond the rush of vengeance pounding it’s way through her veins. There aren’t any sirens yet, so none of the conveniently distant neighbors have called in the fire. If they did, the wolves would hear the trucks far enough away that they could all melt back into the woods, but for now they’re just waiting and watching. The alphas are dead by now, she’s sure, but she’s in no hurry to walk away, and the pack seems to feel the same. 

They’re spread out in a loose circle around the house; the mountain ash barrier is still up, but after the minor skirmish right before Stiles closed the barrier they all feel better knowing that there aren‘t any unobserved exits for an alpha to sneak out of. Peter, Boyd and Isaac are around the back. Lydia is standing to her left, so close their shoulders are brushing, close enough that Allison can see her parted lips and gleaming eyes as she watches the blaze, and the Argent hunters, _her_ hunters,  are fanned out further in that direction. Stiles stands off to her right, and he looks troubled, his eyes shadowed and his limbs full of small, nervous movements. He keeps looking over at Derek and then looking away, although to Allison’s eye Derek is taking this scene a lot better than she expected. He’s impassive and serious, standing a handful of yards past Stiles with his arms folded across his chest. 

Several more yards past Derek, almost around the curve of the house, Scott is mimicking Derek’s stance, arms crossed, eyes on the fire. Allison watches him, is aware that’s she watching him and doesn’t stop. It used to seem so straightforward, why they couldn’t be together. He was a monster, and she was a monster hunter, and her parents‘ disapproval hung on her more heavily when her parents weren‘t around any more to rebel against. Romeo and Juliet ended in death, she told herself, and she didn’t have time to be the weak ingenue when she had war to wage. 

Now that she sees his face, sees the tension in his shoulders, she knows the real reason she can‘t let him love her. Scott could have ended this differently. He could have killed Derek and left with the alpha pack. He had a bright and shiny future, for a monster, waiting for him with them, but he wasn’t a monster. He didn’t have cold-blooded murder in him. He hadn’t even wanted to kill the alphas, arguing until this afternoon for more negotiation. He’d been outvoted. She voted against him, because she’s a murderer and he isn’t. 

Even so far away, she can feel his gentleness on her skin, warm like the flames from the burning house but also comforting, soothing like cool water on a hot day, and she doesn’t want to ruin him. Her chest is full of mud and fire, and she knows she can’t let him in to wash it all away. The pain and the bile will just suck him down too. She’s turned him into a killer tonight, and she knows she’ll do it again if she has to, and for his sake she should turn her eyes away from him and pretend like she doesn’t want to fall into him all over again. 

But then he glances up at her and smiles that soft puppy dog smile, and Allison knows she’s a bad person, and she can feel how hard she’s going to hit when she lands. 

 


End file.
